Of course, in this example, it’s not important that you remember the grocery list in a particular order. However, the technique can be used in this way, because in your mental commute you always drive by the church first, then the apartment building, and finally the golf course. Throughout antiquity, Greek and Roman orators used the method to remember the points to be made in a speech in their proper order. There are a number of other techniques besides the method of loci to aid in remembering. Collectively, such mental manipulations are also referred to as mnemonic devices, and we’ll briefly describe several additional examples, although there are many others.20
The method of loci is helpful because all you need to do is associate the items to be remembered with something you already know (a familiar route). But if you’re willing to learn a simple poem, you can acquire another powerful memory technique:
One is run,
two is shoe,
three is tree,
four is door
and so on …
This is the peg system, in which words that rhyme with or sound like the cardinal numbers are used like the route in the method of loci. (This poem has many variations—the truncated version shown here is the one that Roger was taught as a young child by his father.)
Now let’s go back to the shopping list. With one is run, imagine a horse racing along a racetrack, but instead of carrying a jockey, there’s an enormous bagel in the saddle. For two is shoe, imagine milk in one’s shoes, or perhaps leaking out of them with every step. For three, the item to be remembered can take the place of branches or leaves on a tree. So to finish off this three-item grocery list, imagine an egg tree, with brightly colored Easter eggs taking the place of leaves. The exact form of the mental imagery doesn’t really matter. All that’s needed is for the cue (now tied to a number—something you already know) to connect to the items you want to remember.
Of course, most of the time, you don’t need to link a concept to a number. Instead, you probably just want to connect a vocabulary word in your target language to a word or concept in your native language. Using vivid imagery to associate two words is known as the keyword mnemonic. Here’s an example of how it works. The German word for door is Tür. To remember this word, a student who is knowledgeable about the self-reference effect might draw upon an episode in her life as a memory cue. Say she was visiting Istanbul and found herself locked out of her hotel room, made doubly unfortunate by the fact that she had an urgent need to use the room’s facilities. Her despair at being blocked by the unyielding door in Turkey will help her remember the word Tür in German (except for the umlaut—those cost extra).
Chances are, you’ve made use of other mnemonic devices to learn a variety of material. Many children are taught the made-up name Roy G. Biv, which is an acronym for remembering the seven colors of the spectrum in their proper sequence (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet). In a similar way, sentences like My very educated mother just served us nine pies can be an aid in remembering the order of the planets, with the first letter of each word serving as a cue for remembering Mercury, Venus, Earth, and so on (although with the demotion of Pluto, new sentences have been created with only eight words). Need to remember the eight bones of the wrist? Just recall Some lovers try positions that they can’t handle to remember scaphoid, lunate, triquetrum, pisiform, trapezium, trapezoid, capitate, hamate. We think of Spring forward, fall back to remember how to adjust our clocks, and the rhyme Thirty days hath September to figure out whether next week will include April 31 (hint: it probably won’t).
That all sounds great, but can such mental manipulations help you learn a foreign language? The answer is yes and no. Some material does lend itself readily to the use of mnemonic devices, such as in the above examples. Rhymes are easier to remember than prose because words with similar sounds possess an added component to aid in recall, in much the same way that vocal melodies are better remembered than instrumental melodies. Likewise, in the case of the method of loci, the peg system, and the keyword mnemonic, the use of imagery may help jog memory. Interestingly, the method of loci has also been used to treat depression by helping individuals recall positive, self-affirming personal memories.21
Unfortunately, mnemonic devices also have some limitations. First of all, the majority of linguistic information to be mastered cannot be adapted easily to these techniques. For example, vivid mental images, no matter how apt or bizarre, will be useful in only a limited number of situations, and may fade quickly unless reinforced through testing. Moreover, words that are associated with a visual image are sometimes confused upon recall (Was the word for door in German Tür or was it Türk?). Finally, creating images and associations takes time that might be better spent on other learning strategies.22
Therefore, our advice is to try to use mnemonic devices only if they feel natural to you and suit the material. Incorporated along with the other strategies we’ve discussed in this book, mnemonic devices can be looked upon as additional tools in your cognitive tool kit. Mix and match as needed. Keep in mind, however, that learning can’t occur unless you also maintain a healthy physical condition and a positive emotional state. If you want to improve your memory ability, be sure to get enough sleep, keep yourself healthy, stay relaxed, and maintain a positive attitude toward your target language and culture.23
Epilogue
Although you have reached the end of this book, we hope this is just the beginning of your foreign language journey. We will have achieved our goal if you now think about language learning as being well within your reach. By letting your life experiences enrich your language learning, your language learning will in turn enrich your life. It’s been true for us, and we hope it will be true for you.
Notes
1 Terms and Conditions
1The notes in this book contain references to scientific research that supports the claims we put forward. If you don’t care about sources, feel free to simply ignore the notes.
2On adults learning language more easily than children, see David P. Ausubel, “Adults versus Children in Second-Language Learning: Psychological Considerations,” Modern Language Journal 48 (7) (1964): 420–424; Stefka H. Marinova-Todd, D. Bradford Marshall, and Catherine E. Snow, “Three Misconceptions about Age and L2 Learning,” TESOL Quarterly 34 (1) (2000): 9–34; and Mary Schleppegrell, “The Older Language Learner” (Washington, DC: ERIC Clearinghouse on Languages and Linguistics, 1987), http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED287313.pdf. On children’s ability to acquire a native accent, see Stephen D. Krashen, Michael A. Long, and Robin C. Scarcella, “Age, Rate, and Eventual Attainment in Second Language Acquisition,” TESOL Quarterly 13 (4) (1979): 573–582. On adults’ ability of achieving native-like fluency, see David Birdsong, “Ultimate Attainment in Second Language Acquisition,” Language 68 (4) (1992): 706–755. On children’s having no language learning anxiety, see David P. Ausubel, Educational Psychology: A Cognitive View (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1968); Gregory K. Moffatt, The Parenting Journey: From Conception through the Teen Years (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2004); Schleppegrell, “The Older Language Learner.”
3On disciplines involved in cognitive science, see Howard Gardner, The Mind’s New Science: A History of the Cognitive Revolution (New York: Basic Books, 1985).
4On top-down processing in reading comprehension, see, e.g., Arthur C. Graesser, Cheryl Bowers, Ute J. Bayen, and Xiangen Hu, “Who Said What? Who Knows What? Tracking Speakers and Knowledge in Narratives,” in New Perspectives on Narrative Perspective, ed. Willie van Peer and Seymour Chatman, 255–272 (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2001).
5On adults’ abilities to capitalize on their extensive world knowledge and experience, see, e.g., John B. Black and Robert Wilensky, “An Evaluation of Story Grammars,” Cognitive Science 3 (3) (1979): 213–230.
6On metacognitive and metamemory abilities not being fully developed until adulthood, see Wolfgang Schneider and Kathrin Lockl, “The Development of Metacog
nitive Knowledge in Children and Adolescents,” in Applied Metacognition, ed. Timothy J. Perfect and Bennett L. Schwartz, 224–260 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
7On adults’ sophisticated understanding of their cognitive processes, see Ethan Zell and Zlatan Krizan, “Do People Have Insight into Their Abilities? A Metasynthesis,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 9 (2) (2014): 111–125.
8On politeness routines learned in childhood, see Jean Berko Gleason, Rivka Y. Perlmann, and Esther Blank Greif, “What’s the Magic Word: Learning Language through Politeness Routines,” Discourse Processes 7 (4) (1984): 493–502.
2 Set Yourself Up for Success
1On the availability heuristic, see Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, “Availability: A Heuristic for Judging Frequency and Probability,” Cognitive Psychology 5 (2) (1973): 207–232. For the use of heuristics in artificial intelligence, see, e.g., Herbert A. Simon, “The Structure of Ill-Structured Problems,” Artificial Intelligence 4 (1973): 181–201, http://www.public.iastate.edu/~cschan/235/6_Simon_Ill_defined_problem.pdf.
2On how likely people are to buy earthquake insurance as the memory of the earthquake fades, see Riccardo Rebonato, Plight of the Fortune Tellers: Why We Need to Manage Financial Risk Differently (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010).
3On the planning fallacy, see Roger Buehler, Dale Griffin, and Michael Ross, “Exploring the ‘Planning Fallacy:’ Why People Underestimate Their Task Completion Times,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 67 (3) (1994): 366–381; Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, “Intuitive Prediction: Biases and Corrective Procedures,” Technical Report PTR-1042-77-6, 1977, http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA047747.
4On the benefits of process-focused planning, see Shelley E. Taylor, Lien B. Pham, Inna D. Rivkin, and David A. Armor, “Harnessing the Imagination: Mental Simulation, Self-Regulation, and Coping,” American Psychologist 53 (4) (1998): 429–439.
5On counterfactual thinking, see Victoria Husted Medvec, Scott F. Madey, and Thomas Gilovich, “When Less Is More: Counterfactual Thinking and Satisfaction among Olympic Medalists,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 69 (4) (1995): 603–610.
6On the benefits on maintaining positive beliefs about aging, see Becca R. Levy, Alan B. Zonderman, Martin D. Slade, and Luigi Ferrucci, “Age Stereotypes Held Earlier in Life Predict Cardiovascular Events in Later Life,” Psychological Science 20 (3) (2009): 296–298.
7For more on the hindsight bias, see Neal J. Roese and Kathleen D. Vohs, “Hindsight Bias,” Perspectives on Psychological Science 7 (5) (2012): 411–426.
8On the time it takes to form new habits, in addition to Maxwell Maltz, Psycho-Cybernetics: A New Way to Get More Living Out of Life (New York: Prentice Hall, 1960), see, e.g., Phillippa Lally, Cornelia H. M. Van Jaarsveld, Henry W. W. Potts, and Jane Wardle, “How Are Habits Formed: Modeling Habit Formation in the Real World,” European Journal of Social Psychology 40 (6) (2010): 998–1009.
9On predictors of how successful people are at giving up smoking, see Andrew Hyland, Ron Borland, Qiang Li, Hua H. Yong, Ann McNeill, Geoffrey T. Fong, Richard J. O’Connor, and K. M. Cummings, “Individual-Level Predictors of Cessation Behaviours among Participants in the International Tobacco Control (ITC) Four Country Survey,” Tobacco Control 15 (Suppl. III) (2006): iii83–iii94.
10On distributed versus massed practice (or cramming), see John Dunlosky, Katherine A. Rawson, Elizabeth J. Marsh, Mitchell J. Nathan, and Daniel T. Willingham, “Improving Students’ Learning with Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions from Cognitive and Educational Psychology,” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 14 (1) (2013): 4–58.
11“Specific, high (hard) goals lead to a higher level of task performance”: Edwin A. Locke and Gary P. Latham, “New Directions in Goal-Setting Theory,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 15 (5) (2006): 265–268, at 265.
12For Bandura’s work on self-efficacy, see Albert Bandura, “Self-Efficacy: Toward a Unifying Theory of Behavioral Change,” Psychological review 84 (2) (1977): 191–215.
13On negative experiences leading to low self-efficacy, see Madeline E. Ehrman, Understanding Second Language Learning Difficulties (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1996).
14For Navratilova’s interviews, see Giles Smith, “Tennis: Wimbledon’93: Navratilova Looking Forward to a Happy 21st: The Woman with More Titles Than Any Other Player Relishes the Unpredictability of Grass, Especially on Centre Court,” Independent, June 21, 1993, http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/tennis-wimbledon-93-navratilova-looking-forward-to-a-happy-21st-the-woman-with-more-titles-than-any-other-player-relishes-the-unpredictability-of-grass-especially-on-centre-court-giles-smith-reports-1492895.html. For more on self-handicapping, see Arthur Frankel and Mel L. Snyder, “Egotism among the Depressed: When Self-Protection Becomes Self-Handicapping,” 1987, paper presented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association, http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED289120.pdf.
15On self-handicapping becoming a way of life, see, e.g., S. Berglas and E. E. Jones, “Control of Attributions about the Self through Selfhandicapping Strategies: The Appeal of Alcohol and the Role of Underachievement,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 4 (2) (1978): 200–206.
16On lessening anxiety about trying to achieve proficiency later in life, see Zoltán Dörnyei, “Motivation and Motivating in the Foreign Language Classroom,” Modern Language Journal 78 (3) (1994): 273–284, and “Motivation in Second and Foreign Language Learning,” Language Teaching 31 (3) (1998): 117–135.
17On Vygotsky’s concept of zone of proximal development, see Lev S. Vygotsky, Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980).
18On the ability to gauge for yourself whether you’re “in the zone,” see Janet Metcalfe, “Metacognitive Judgments and Control of Study,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 18 (3) (2009): 159–163.
3 Aspects of Language
1On the nature of English spelling–sound relationships and George Bernard Shaw, see Ben Zimmer, “GHOTI,” New York Times Magazine, June 25, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/magazine/27FOB-onlanguage-t.html?_r=0 Zimmer 2010.
2On the advice to focus solely on speaking and listening so as not to be confused by irregularities, see, e.g., Paul Pimsleur, How to Learn a Foreign Language (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013).
3Focusing on spoken material “deprives the older learner of his principal learning tool”: Ausubel, “Adults versus Children in Second-Language Learning,” 423.
4For these statistics and more, see Office of the Inspector General, “Inspection of the Foreign Service Institute,” March 31, 2013, http://oig.state.gov/system/files/209366.pdf.
5On the various definitions of fluency, see Marie-Noèlle Guillot, Fluency and Its Teaching (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 1999).
6For more on aphasia, see http://www.aphasia.org.
7For Crawford’s story, see Philip Crawford, “Bon Appétit? Not So Fast,” New York Times, May 6, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/07/opinion/bon-appetit-not-so-fast.html.
8For more on interlanguages, see Larry Selinker, “Interlanguage,” International Review of Applied Linguistics 10 (1–4) (1972): 209–231.
9For more on fossilization, see, e.g., Larry Selinker and John T. Lamendella, “The Role of Extrinsic Feedback in Interlanguage Fossilization,” Language Learning 29 (2) (1979): 363–376.
10On the cognitive science notion of common ground, see Herbert H. Clark and C. R. Marshall, “Definite Reference and Mutual Knowledge,” in Elements of Discourse Understanding, ed. Aravind K. Joshi, Bonnie L. Webber, and Ivan A. Sag, 10–63 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
4 Pragmatics and Culture
1On adults’ ability to learn vocabulary and grammar and how it compares to that of children, see, e.g., Ellen Bialystok and Kenji Hakuta, In Other Words: The Science and Psychology of Second-Language Acquisition (New York:
Basic Books, 1994); James Emil Flege, Grace H. Yeni-Komshian, and Serena Liu, “Age Constraints on Second-Language Acquisition,” Journal of Memory and Language 41 (1) (1999): 78–104.
2For more on the ILR Speaking Skill Scale, see http://www.govtilr.org/skills/ILRscale2.htm.
3“Make your conversational contribution such as is required”: H. Paul Grice, “Logic and Conversation,” in Syntax and Semantics, vol. 3: Speech Acts, ed. Peter Cole and Jerry. L. Morgan, 41–58, at 45 (New York: Academic Press, 1975). For more on Grice’s Cooperative Principle and his conversational maxims, see also Grice, “Further Notes on Logic and Conversation,” in Syntax and Semantics, vol. 9: Pragmatics, ed. Peter Cole, 183–197 (New York: Academic Press, 1978).
4For examples of when we might no longer assume a conversational partner is cooperating, see Richard Roberts and Roger Kreuz, “Nonstandard Discourse and Its Coherence,” Discourse Processes 16 (4) (1993): 451–464.
5For more on Austin’s speech act theory, see John L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, 2nd ed. ed. J. O. Urmson and Marina Sbisá (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975).
6On figurative speech as fundamental to language, see Howard R. Pollio, Jack M. Barlow, Harold J. Fine, and Marilyn R. Pollio, Psychology and the Poetics of Growth: Figurative Language in Psychology, Psychotherapy, and Education (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1977).
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